Ball Week! - Day 6: Lemon-Lime Sugar Cookie Balls

Welcome to the final, bonus day of Ball Week on I'll Bake It, You Eat It!  I've had so much fun with this theme that I need to think of a new series to work on.

If you've been keeping up with Ball Week, you already deduced that these Lemon-Lime Sugar Cookie Balls were selected to be served along with Peanut Butter Balls, Cheesecake Balls and Nutella Rice Krispie Balls at my friend's upcoming wedding.  I'm so glad because these are definitely one of my favorite balls of the whole bunch.

I didn't expect to like these balls as much as I did.  I picked them because I thought it would be nice to have something light and summery on the dessert station.  Plus, these are covered in white chocolate instead of dark chocolate which is different from most of the other ball options presented.

I used a recipe from Sing For Your Supper as a guide, but made quite a few adjustments so I'm going to post my version of the recipe at the end of this post. 

I started by making a batch of my favorite sugar cookie recipe - it's the recipe I use all the time for sugar cookie cut-outs and I'm a big fan.  I added lemon and lime juice and lemon and lime zest to the dough to give it a nice citrus flavor..  I increased the amounts from the original recipe significantly because I didn't feel like it had quite enough citrus flavor in it and I'm happy that I did.

Instead of making individual cookies, the dough is spread into a baking pan and baked like a brownie.  It took a lot longer to bake than I expected but, in hindsight, I probably should have used a bigger pan so the dough was thinner and baked more quickly.  Regardless, it firmed up eventually and worked perfectly.

Once the cookie bars cool you crumble them up into tiny little pieces and mix it with cream cheese. Lemon, lime, sugar and cream cheese.  Yes, please.

At this point, I tasted the mixture (OK fine, I tasted the cookies by themselves too... and the cookie dough - stop judging me) and thought it still might not be lemon-limey enough.  At this stage in process adding more juice would have made the balls too loose so I added more zest.  Good decision.  Not only did it add a bit more flavor, it also left pretty little yellow and green specks in the ball.

Once everything is mixed together, it gets rolled into balls, thoroughly chilled and dipped in white chocolate.  The result is good... really good. 

For the sake of aesthetics, I am going to add sprinkles to the top of the balls for the actual event - it's festive and it covers up any imperfections in the chocolate covering process but at the time of night that I finished making all these balls the idea of sprinkles was quickly thrown out the window.  It was late... very late... and I spent all day making 8 kinds of balls.  Decorations were the last thing on my mind, finding my bed was the first.

Once our trusty tasters had their fill of these balls, I told CA to promptly remove them from the house.  He had to take every last leftover ball to work because I would have eaten them until I was sick.  I told you they were my favorite.

The cookie is just sweet enough and the cream cheese adds this amazing creamy and slightly tart flavor.  Plus the citrus juice and zest shines to make you think these aren't nearly as heavy as they probably are.  Plus, look at those pretty zest speckles.  They're so cute! 


Lemon-Lime Sugar Cookie Truffles
adapted from Sing For Your Supper

Makes approximately 45 balls

Ingredients

2 ½ cups All Purpose Flour

1 tsp Baking Powder

½ tsp Salt

1/8 tsp Cream of Tartar

¾ cups (1 ½ sticks) Butter, softened

1 cup Sugar

2 Eggs

1 tsp Vanilla Extract

Juice of 2 Lemons

Juice of 2 Limes

Zest of 3 Lemons (divided)

Zest of 3 Limes (divided)

12 oz. Cream Cheese (1 1/2 blocks), at room temperature

1 package White Chocolate Candy Coating

Sprinkles (optional)

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

In a medium bowl, mix together the flour, baking powder, salt and cream of tartar.

In a stand mixer with the paddle attachment, cream the butter with the sugar, beating on medium speed until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes.  Add the eggs, vanilla, lemon juice, lime juice, half the lemon and half the lime zest and mix on low speed until combined.  Add the flour mixture and mix on low speed until just combined.

Spray a 9x9 baking pan with cooking spray.  Spread the batter in the pan and bake for 30-40 minutes until the cookie dough is fully baked.  Allow the cookies to cool completely.

Finely crumble the cookies into the bowl of your stand mixer and add the cream cheese and remaining lemon and lime zest.  Using the paddle attachment, mix on low speed until the cream cheese is completely integrated.  Roll into 1 – 1 ½ inch balls.  Refrigerate until firm, at least 1 hour.

Line a baking sheet with waxed paper.  Melt the white chocolate by microwaving in 30 second intervals, stirring in between, until completely melted.  Dip each ball in the chocolate and place it on the prepared baking sheet, top with sprinkles if desired.  Let the chocolate harden and store in the refrigerator.

I hope you enjoyed Ball Week as much as I did.  If you have any ideas for future series, please let me know.  I love a good theme!

Julie